| Naxis |
For me it is half about different flavor and half about a more free form flexibility(or being noodly as we like to call it).
As someone else mentioned that they did earlier earlier, I used psionics rules in some campaigns that were sci-fi flavored to great effect. The writers also did a great job in coming up with truly different abilities. A sword grafted to your hand all day that is now a natural attack... awesome! An augmentable expansion power that allows you at later levels to become sing huge or gargantuan... wicked! In addition most of the powers were meant to be used in concert with each other, unlike magic where each spell felt like a world on its own. And most of all, psionics didn't feel like it was built to do room to room dungeon crawling like magic is. The more dynamic nature of the abilities fits better in campaigns where the battle isn't straight forward; where you might be playing cat and mouse with your enemies, or subtle and smart action is a must.
Rules wise I like the slight increase in complexity ( which is why I suspect some others are intimidated by it) that allows for so much flexibility. Having the choice of how much power to put in one attack along with no level restriction of having useless early level spells/powers that you have to memorize makes the game more strategic. Each thing you do is a measured decision. This is really what makes psionics for me, a way to ramp us the difficulty class of gaming for an experienced gamer. It also allowed it to scale to higher levels better then magic does.
If anything I would like it if psionics was a more complex system that it is now. When I did all psionics games that had people in an all psionics world, there was a lot missing from psionics that would allow a society to function. I would like to see more interesting telepathic rules. Think of professor X and all the things that he can do, search for minds, exert his will to try to contact them, go into dreams, communicate over long distances, send fleeting messages, hold telepathic conference calls.
I would also think psionics would be a good place for rules of psionic subterfuge. Currently, any mid level pc can make the sense motive check to know if someone is charmed or dominated. Also detect psionics ends a mystery then and there. Making more interesting rules and powers/feats as well as making the system naturally scale according to level could make subtle storytelling games more interesting. And isn't that the most important part of the game system, "Does it support the Story?" I have been working on a lot of these revisions myself (mostly making prestige classes that "fix" the problem for that class), but it would be sure nice if it were built in.